Abduction of Nigerian girls demands aid rethink

Australia has a range of humanitarian goals in Africa, but in light of the abduction of more than 200 girls, countering Islamist militancy should be accorded a higher priority, writes Anthony Bergin and Daniel Grant.

Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan has admitted that he still does not know where more than 200 abducted girls are being held after they were taken three weeks ago by a militant Islamist group.

The group is known as Boko Haram, whose name means "western education is forbidden". Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister, has called on the British government to provide military assistance to free the girls.

On Friday the US government said it would aid Nigeria in the search, though it didn't specify what form that aid would take. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said getting the girls back was imperative because this "is not just an act of terrorism. It's a massive human trafficking moment and grotesque."

Overnight the BBC reported that militant leader Abubakar Shekau sent a video, obtained by the AFP news agency, in which he said for the first time that his group had taken the girls, and that the girls shouldn't have been in school, but rather should get married. The Boko Haram leader didn't state the number of girls abducted, nor where they are now.

Last week, a bombing in the Nigerian capital Abuja killed 19, on top of 75 killed there two weeks ago. Boko Haram claimed responsibility. More than 1500 people have already died in attacks attributed to the Islamist group in Nigeria this year.

These terrorist acts remind us that there's now a growing threat of Islamist insurgency spreading from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa into sub-Saharan Africa.

Fragile states in east and west Africa have been struggling to cope with the ruthless wave of international terrorism, which is now bordering on insurgency in some place. (In some places it started as an insurgency and morphed or was corrupted by international terrorism).

This has the capacity to do serious damage not only to these societies, but to Australia's growing interests in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the Sahel becomes the swamp from which the global jihadis can train, indoctrinate and strike out around the world.

The jihadi export countries include Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania (to a lesser extent), and Libya and Egypt. Most of the fighters and even the leadership of these groups includes Nigerians and Somalis.

Kenya is an increasingly attractive jihadi target. Nigeria's getting out of hand in parts of the country. Yemen isn't an African country, but it does have very important and historic links to east Africa, particularly radicalised hotbeds like Somalia.

Australia should step up our meagre efforts and assist here. The Abbott Government amalgamated the development assistance agency AusAid into the Foreign Affairs department to ensure our aid efforts are more closely aligned with our foreign policy goals. While we've got a range of humanitarian goals across sub-Saharan Africa, countering Islamist militancy should be accorded a higher priority.

It was useful that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently announced a $10 million aid package to support state building efforts in Somalia.

But in the context of our shrinking aid budget we need to remain clear about Australia's policy priorities in Africa: we shouldn't be wasting scarce funds that could be going to wage political warfare for the hearts of minds of those Africans turning to Islamist extremism.

This year we're giving roughly $230 million in assistance to sub-Saharan Africa (down from $385 million last year). We should be spending our African aid budget in those countries threatened by jihadist groups and where countries are lacking the resources to fund the necessary capabilities to defeat terrorist groups.

We should focus on African nation-building in those front-line states as part of a co-ordinated strategy worked out with all other agencies of government, including defence and our intelligence community to counter Islamist militancy in Africa: our foreign aid should be seen as the soft end of counterterrorism.

At the heart of the appeal of radicalism is a failed relationship between state and citizen. We should sponsor educational institutions that compete with radical messages emitted from foreign funded educational institutions. We've done that in Indonesia.

It's only worthwhile paying for education if students' safety can be assured, so we need to partner in security sector reform, military training, and forensic specialists. (Our federal police have a limited presence in Africa).

Promoting professionalism among police and custodial service officers might prevent Africa's prisons from becoming incubators of radicalism, as has occurred in other regions. This doesn't mean that in every case counterterrorism should trump all other causes for our foreign aid.

But by committing to partnership in these areas we can make a modest contribution to building Africa's resilience to the forces of international terrorism. It will also require us to defer or be highly co-ordinated with other larger aid donors.

A more secure Africa is one in which Australian engagement can flourish: we should increase our contribution to African counterterrorism through aid, as well as through police and military assistance programs.

Anthony Bergin is the deputy director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. View his full profile here. Daniel Grant is a researcher at ASPI. View his full profile here.

Comments (54)

Terry:

06 May 2014 9:41:44am

For a change a sensible and well argued article on the Drum.

I am not sure, however, that we should link our aid program so directly to anti-terrorism, even if just by having it as an objective. As we have seen in Pakistan with the anti-vaccination program. even a rumour of a connection leads to attacks on those providing the assistance so desperately needed.

Perhaps what is needed is for the establishment of a African led organisation to counter terrorism. I am afraid, however, that the rabid anti-US, anti-West emotion that is encouraged throughout that continent would make even something so obviously beneficial impossible to achieve.

PS To those who claim that looking at your notes while Ms Gillard is speaking is proof of misogyny: this is what real misogyny looks like. Men who believe that women are not worth educating, but are only to be used for breeding.

Caffettierra Moka:

06 May 2014 10:48:58am

No. This is what religion looks like without the nicey-nicey stuff about 'peace, love and mung-beans'. This is what happens when democracy is eroded to the point where anyone with a holy book and a bunch of guns steps into the power-vacuum. It will happen in any place where a bunch of fairy-stories are elevated above reason, science and the law.

mike:

06 May 2014 1:06:24pm

Um, rob1966, I recall LOTS of outrage about Kony and his gang....far more in fact than there has been over this lot. As for 200 being just "some girls" perhaps your sense of proportion is diminished whenever Islam is involved.

Ben:

Mike (the other one):

06 May 2014 8:41:08pm

@rob1966

I think you'll find that Kony is or was just another wannabe African tin-pot dictator who would use anything to muster support. The Lord's Resistance Army is a concoction of African mysticism, Christian fundamentalism, Acholi nationalism, even a bit of Islam and anything else that might help the cause thrown in.

Whereas Islam has designs for a worldwide caliphate and the western (Christian) world and its secular ideology and our institutions of democracy is an anathema to it - which of course poses a potential threat to our chosen way of life.

You may think that there is no chance that any Islamic influence could ever be a problem in the modern western world but keep this in mind; just about every country that borders directly onto a majority Muslim country has problems in their border regions with Islamic insurgencies and they are all too often violent and deadly.

whohasthefish:

06 May 2014 11:03:30am

Terry. I think the article and its subject should be treated very seriously and your partisan gibe is both unnecessary and unwelcome.

These abhorrent Boko whatever do not represent the people of Muslim faith and no matter the outcome (hopefully good for the girls and their families) they should be hunted down and bought to justice for not only this crime, but others including the murders of school girls in other schools.

Surely we as a prosperous and influential country can impress upon the UN to take action to cripple this repugnant gang of thugs.

Nemo:

06 May 2014 11:48:51am

Indeed, my thoughts were the same. There is confected mysogyny a la Gillard the Home Wrecker and the real thing, this is the real thing, and there are those in Australia who also think this way. Can we not focus on making sure that this rot doesn't set in here?

Jay Somasundaram:

06 May 2014 9:50:05am

The best way to fight terrorism is to strengthen a world government. The problem is that the big boys are almost as bad as the little boys. By definition, terrorism is what the other guys do, not us. Our invasion of Iraq, Russias and the Ukraine.

A world government that kills the arms industry and the destruction that war causes. One that can control multinationals, and manage global warming in a coherent way.

mick:

"The best way to fight terrorism is to strengthen a world government."

Of course it is because it's always worked so well in the past .. oh wait

Who would run this "World Government" .. ?

The same mobs who run most of the world now?

Conservatives?

Regressives (previously wanted to be called progressive, but that's the opposite of they way they behave)

Personally, I like the way it is now in preference to a "World Government", who may decide to move people from crowded places to my own countries less crowded places, who may decide all manner of things we don't like.

You just know a "World Government" is going to be totalitarian, because the people who want it, Jay, all tend to be the type who dislike freedoms and the way things are now.

It's not a perfect world, but "World Government", just has the most noxious overtones to it .. what next, World Police?

Would a "World Government" treat everyone exactly the same, or will there be special rights for special people?

This is where it will get messy as the don't haves want the stuff the do-haves have got.

What a nightmare, and rather than solve our problems locally and democratically, Jay wants a "World Government" to play big brother.

AGB:

Peter of Melbourne:

06 May 2014 11:51:07am

thanks but no thanks. you know exactly where you can put your "world government". just looking at the past and current behaviours of so called world organisations is enough to make a sane person cringe in their shoes.

Dove:

06 May 2014 9:54:03am

Of all the overblown, paranoid military rot to read today. We are presented with the usual "global jihadis" and "jihadi export" as if they were real. Make no mistake, without a confected threat, the folk at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute would have to go out and work for a living.

The most modest of interest in this area reveals that what we're really talking about is political violence. Murder, rape, bombings to achieve a political goal- a new strongman, to secure booty, to be rewarded as puppets of a great power to to install a new local regime. Global it aint. The participants are all Muslism, but wait for it, they're in a Muslim country. This it no more a jihad than the US is on a global Baptist conquista.

And what solutions do we have here on offer? "Security sector reform" and "military training". Brilliant. Now "we" can pump money and guns into "our" strongman to counter the theirs. I wonder what could possibly go wrong?

mick:

Agreed Dove, we should just leave them to it - in fact, Australia should withdraw from all of Africa.

What on earth are we doing there anyway apart from instilling our home grown propaganda about entitlement and finger wagging at people we clearly don't understand.

The real question, is whether we see ourselves as international worry worts who want to tell everyone what to do and how to do it, or as benevolent suppliers of money for whatever it takes to sooth our handwringers about "social justice", without actually achieving anything beyond pats ont he head from the UN (who fracking cares about that anyway!)

Let's face it, Africa is a basket case and is going no where any time soon

No one can take on these terror gangs on their own turf.

So rather than blather on about what should or shouldn't be done, why not just get back to basics back home and stop spraying money around! It is not helping anyone or anything.

Mike (the other one):

06 May 2014 11:38:50pm

Mick, I couldn't agree more, we should get out, stay out and leave them to it and vice versa. The only exception being that IF they ask for advice on things like modern farming practices, health care, education, legal and legislative systems, etcetera we could help with advice only.

Why the hell do we need Australian engagement in Africa to flourish as the line in the article implies? What do we need out of Africa that we haven't (potentially) got here - raw materials, manufacturing, technology, food production? A little more re-focussing on our own nest and our own future wouldn't go astray instead of poking our noses into other people's business like the good ol' US of A does on a continuing basis.

MJLC:

06 May 2014 10:32:55am

I quite agree with the thrust of your comments Dove, and as someone with 15 years of (unbroken) exposure to sub-Saharan Africa I may - just may - be able to see things from a perspective Messrs Bergin and Grant appear to lack.

Individually, Africans are some of the most amazing and interesting folk you can meet (Australians, in more ways than one, are very pale by comparison), but collectively they have a rather unfortunate tendency of becoming a mess.

What the authors are fretting over here - in an environment of rapidly fluctuating fortunes which characterise the African experience - is just who it is who gets to be the latest through the revolving door to "control" the mess.

If they can only be patient (an excellent African virtue by the way), there'll be a more palatable "mess manager" along fairly soon anyway.

Dove:

06 May 2014 12:53:20pm

Thanks for your post, Realist. It's nice to disagree in a civil manner. As you raised Nigeria, Boko Haram has been around for some time, ironically beginning by building schools to educate the poor and agitating against government corruption. About ten years later the violence started and under new management they became armed killers. This, of course, didn't take place in a vacuum, with violence on both sides, but you can do your own reading. My point is thay yes, they are muslim, and the central government is not. This reinforces political, tribal, ethnic and religious divides but it doesn't create them. Just because the people holding the guns are Muslism does not a Jihad make.

mike:

06 May 2014 1:09:29pm

Dove, with all due respect, there are jihadi movements in not only Nigeria, but China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and all over the Middle East. They all share a similar ideology of wishing to impose sharia on everyone and killing those who resist. It is a reality that the world has to deal with at present, unfortunately. Pretending it does not exist will not make it go away.

Dove:

Saying you are on a jihad does not make it so, nor does claiming you are on a pilgrimage, a crusade or any other mission from god. This is not politically correct, just correct.

In regards to your list of violent places with armed muslims- whilst they share a religion, the main ideology that they share is secular: terrorism, insurrection, insergency, rebellion, revolution. Motives we can all understand.

MJLC:

06 May 2014 1:05:35pm

(1) Actually, truly wise people tend to go out of their way not to have to meet gunmen in the first place.

(2) The mechanics of the tale you make reference to are that you get stuck ON a tar baby, not IN one. Getting stuck in a tar baby would - in the old days at least - get you a visit from the vice squad.

(3) I'm totally at a loss to understand what "attitude" you claim to be observing in Dove's post. I'm guessing it was just the logical outcome of getting up a head of steam and not noticing the finishing line whiz past.

Steve_C:

06 May 2014 2:34:58pm

"you dont meet a gunman with flowers you meet them with overwhelming firepower and eradicate them once and for all."

Wow!!

That sentence needs to be read to "The Star Spangled Banner" turned up loud enough to have the neighbours banging on your door - at which time you can meet them with the same overwhelming force that the U.S. of Hey, Hey Hey!! meets all enemies of "Truth, Justice and the American way"!!! much like Jimmy met Dave in Bondi yesterday!

I guess the subterfuge of meeting the gunmen with flowers, then slitting their throats when they are totally off their guard isn't "honourable" enough for the "overwhelming force" brigade; even if history has demonstrated time and time again how such an underhanded approach is vastly more effective.

Of course, such a solution is up to the natives to provide. Maybe they will - maybe they won't...

Meanwhile boys like yourself will be hoping for an opportunity to flex those overwhelming force muscles on what must clearly be an underwhelming force, because the last thing an overwhelming force would want is to lose to an underwhelming force - like the U.S. did in Vietnam.

Reagan Country:

06 May 2014 5:26:52pm

Peter, I understand where you're coming from. It reminds me of the famous dialogue in the movie 'The Untouchables' which summarized is "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."

But I can't go past Abraham Lincoln who said "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

Maybe the extremists are past becoming friends, leaving us with no option but to adopt your approach. Personally, I'd exhaust every possible avenue in a search for peace, but I'd do so from a position of strength as a bargaining chip and insurance if the peaceful overtures proved fruitless.

Dove:

06 May 2014 2:00:30pm

mike, If jihadi means any muslim with a gun on the wrong side of the US State Department, then indeed such people are in Nigeria, the Bongo Congo and quire possibly under your bed. For the rest of the planet its main application is as a recruiting tool. Of course they are going to try to appeal to their religious base. Of course they are going to invoke a higher authority, but do they look like religious people to you? Kony 2012 lead the Lords Resistance Army. If you think that was about Christianity rather than a crude attempt to garner support in a brutal power struggle, then good luck to you and post elsewhere.

Terry:

06 May 2014 2:52:08pm

The leaders of Christian groups and majority Christian countries fell over themselves to disassociate themselves from the LRA. In fact in many "Christian" countries mass movements were set up to force their governments to take action to chase the criminals involved.

Could you point me to a similar mass movement in an "Islamic" country? How about the leader of a major Islamic country disavowing these terrorists. A march decrying their activities in such a country?

If every mosque in Nigeria took common action against Boko Haram there might be some hope.

You get more outcry about the building of a block of flats in Jerusalem than for the murder of hundreds of men, women and children.

Dove:

As for mass movements, have a look as Muhammadiyah in Indonesia, who have been strident in their criticism of terrorism. See Minhaj-ul-Quran in Pakistan.

There have been marches and rallies in Indonesia against terrorism, Pakistan and Turkey. That's just from memory of the tellie in recent times. I'm sure your research will show even more.

If you are concerned that national figures in the Islamic world aren't condemning terrorism, look at what's been said by the governments of Egypt, Saudi, Qatar, Yemen, UAE, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Iraq....in fact for every insurrection in the muslim world using religion as a recruiting tool there is a government, staffed, administered and lead by muslims, fighting against it.

In case you never heard, every muslim body in Australia has condemned terrorism. Were you to go to a mosque for Friday prayers you often find world events and overseas "brother muslims" being topics of both sermon and conversation. You'll also find people praying for victims on both sides, as the mosque might well contain people with friends and relatives on both sides. You also find them pray for non muslims killed in war, and that includes Israelis. If you'd like to come to see for your yourself I'm sure I cold recommend somewhere near you?

mj:

06 May 2014 10:00:04am

I hope the whole world is listening to this grotesque inhuman behaviour and will do something about it and not sit on the fence. I mean Asia and Russia as well as the West should be appalled, those poor girls. Its should make us shout enough is enough.

capewell:

06 May 2014 3:00:21pm

OK then shout enough is enough, what are you going to do ? blog them to freedom? This whole event gets noticed because it is 200 people at the one time like a plane crash. This mayhem of persecution, theft, injury, rape, death is happening on a daily basis for thousands of people.

Africa is spiralling downwards and only those with a stomach for it are left to drill and mine it while they can and then leave the discarded husk.

mj:

06 May 2014 10:59:18am

Of course the whole thing is political and nothing to do with Allah. Anyone who proclaims that he had a vision Allah spoke to him that he should send these girls into slavery is either mad or extremely bad. Is there no one in this group of fanatics who can see further than their nose and feel appalled by this inhuman behaviour.

They must feel that their leader is the almighty prophet that we have seen in parts of the world to rise now and again. Just think of Jim Jones where hundreds drank poison willingly because their leader told them to and The Manson Family to mention just a few.

I don't think that most of the Islamist population agree with this fellow that Allah has ordered him to send these girls into slavery. They too have children and like most parents would not like to send them into prostitution.

Philosopher:

06 May 2014 11:50:04am

We have been working in Sub-Saharan Arica for many years. We have been struggling again Islamist insurgents out of Somalia using tribals in Kenya and also dealing with people in West Africa and Anti-Islamists in North Africa. We have never received one cent in aid from the AU aid funds and have seen very little effective expenditure of AU funds. We as a group are now trying to stabilise Somalia with simple programs from NE Kenya. Au provides no assistance to us. In my view the AU aid funds should stopped until the programs are better constructed and more effectively used.

Good Grief:

06 May 2014 4:34:55pm

Agreed. Again, Australia has self imposed some moral baggage on an unrelated issue half way across the world; "condemn if we do, condemn if we don't".

We have people who would condemn us for any direct action we would enact on the region of interest, calling it Imperialism, even if we believe it will lead to stability. Other people will condemn us if we ignore the issue, calling us selfish and heartless for refusing to aid another's plight. So all we have left as an answer is to throw money at the problem, praying that the recipients will one day use it efficiently and solve it in their own empowered ways. But then what happens if the money and resources are not well spent (as we've seen happen often with aid)? What happens when people then turn our aid into an obligation to continue throwing money at the problem?

So I agree, there needs to be a clear viable plan to tackle the problem proposed by the local populace before we get ourselves involved.

Brian Goulding:

06 May 2014 12:53:47pm

Boko Haram have military munitions and equipment, they use military grade explosives and are apparently immune to government military activity. They have shown to have at least one armoured vehicle and more smaller vehicles that all require fuel. I am not aware that there are servo's in the African jungle. there are thousands of them, they have to eat, cook food wash and other personal stuff, so how could they 'hide' in the scrub. their weapons are supplied from somewhere, their fuel for vehicles comes from somewhere, their food has to come from somewhere. I believe, and so do many others, that all this is being funded with western aid money siphoned off by corrupt officials on every side of every fence ....

Alian:

Here we go again, the mini me of the US in Asia having a suggestion that we should go to Africa to deal with an issue abt religion.

It is not abt misogyny or anything else other than RELIGION and our (and the US's) need to be the new crusaders against the Islamic hordes.

Africa is beset with issues based on Tribalisation, religion and the legacy of a European abuse and we have no business being involved or having a suggestion put forward that we be involved.

Leave them alone and concentrate and spend the money on making this country safe and a good place to live for all folk, no mater the religion, colour or gender, when we have our house in order then perhaps we can suggest that perhaps there is a better way! An isolationist policy might well be best for Australia right now and for th next ten years.

Geoff Q:

norton75:

06 May 2014 3:45:36pm

I agree old67 money has been pouring in for years.Uncle Bob{Geldof} has even admitted he was a little misguided.Ethiopia was the big push in the seventies where did that get us.Why does little Australia think that any of these countries would bother to listen to us.They only pay lip service to Australia as our cash greases their palms to be divided amongst their croneys.Tribalism is strong in Africa and no amount of religious zealots or well meaning do gooders will have any lasting effect.Africa should be left to find it's own way as we really do not understand them fully as it has many complexities.

vkgavg:

06 May 2014 4:36:18pm

" I think we should be doing business with them. I don?t believe in aid because it has been proven for the last 50 years that it doesn?t work.

But trade. Invest in Africa. Let Africans change their own destiny. I lived in Kenya for a long time, and when a mass uprising expressed in the form of demonstrations comes about against the government, the government then violently puts that down.

Now a number of the Africans that I spoke to and knew at the time would say if Daniel Radmore did not have all this money that he is getting from Britain and other western countries in aid, he would not be able to buy the weapons to crush us.

But in many African countries, because of aid, the authoritarian figures there can afford to get the weapons and the money to oppress their own people.

Martin:

06 May 2014 5:48:14pm

There are many tragic things happening in the world- most unreported.Is Australia big enough to make a difference?Should we even try?

Wouldn't we be a bit upset if foreign countries started to get involved in our politics and decide they would support one side or the other?Would any one like the USA to start funding the LNP or the Russians or Chinese to fund the ALP? Or to support the government of those parties against the legal opposition? Or for foreigners to attempt to make an opposition party here illegal?One would hope that people on both sides of politics would be opposed to this.

Mike (the other one):

07 May 2014 12:14:17am

"These terrorist acts remind us that there's now a growing threat of Islamist insurgency spreading from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa into sub-Saharan Africa".

And they would very much like to spread it across the globe. The extremists are not only in the trouble spots of the world. They are right here in Australia and they are educated and running softer insurgencies. The various Islamic and Shia councils and organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia are good examples of this, constantly instucting us on how to pander to, yeild to and accomodate Islam.

GrumpiSkeptic:

07 May 2014 2:28:46am

It is the tax returns time, soon. I quarantined a certain amount of my yearly income towards charity. International charities were some of the recipients of my contributions. Unfortunately, I am getting more and more disillusioned with them as I watched those countries I was trying to help were sinking deeper into the holes of despair, perhaps more appropriately, disrepair!

Refugees, civil wars, kidnapping, rape and pillage, famines, cycle of floods and droughts, military brutality, military incompetency, stupid governments, the list goes on and one. Now I only concentrate on local charities as I see no good is to be gained in wasting my money for a lost cause!

Yes, Nigeria...Ever receive a letter cheerfully informing you are the lucky recipient of a $million? Ever been cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars for that prince charming, or princes you met on the Internet?

Now that bunch of fools calling themselves warriors against western education. I bet they can't read and write themselves, and don't want anybody else more learned than them!

Then we have the incompetent government ministers who are very good at talking around the real problems than resorting to actions. What is these failed stares coming to?

Well, Goodluck Johnathan, you needed more than just good luck, you need some competence !